“Except the memories,” he said. “Would you like a drink?”
She nodded. Liquid courage wasn’t the worst idea in truth. He handed over a scotch and she sipped it as he cleared his throat.
“That is the second time you have risked your life to save my sister,” he said softly.
She set the drink aside and worried her hands before her. “Well, I would do it ten more times. A hundred.”
He nodded. “I know you would.”
She took a long breath. “But Kit, that gratitude you feel, it is…it’s not a reason for us to marry.”
He drew back and his expression crumpled, so she rushed to continue before he could interrupt. “Kit, you asked me to be your wife because your sister was in danger. We both know Lucas’s reports will come back saying that Hannah boarded a ship, headed to America. I don’t like that any more than you do, but it solves your problem just the same. She won’t be able to hurt Phoebe. And so your reason for marrying me goes away.”
“That’swhat you think?” he said softly.
“Yes,” she said, and heard the strain in her voice. The pain in it.
“You said you loved me,” he said. “When we found you in the clearing this afternoon.”
She flinched, for she hadn’t meant to bare her heart to him that way. Not in that moment. But she refused to deny it, either. “I-I do love you, Kit. I didn’t mean to fall in love. I tried not to, even. But I do. I love you, and that is a greater reason for us not to wed than any other.”
“Your loving me is a reasonnotto wed,” he said. “Explain that.”
She shook her head. “I could never hold you to a bargain you made under duress is one reason. That wouldn’t be love. And the second…”
She trailed off. Finding the courage for this was harder than she’d thought. Harder than jumping on the back of that behemoth who had threatened Phoebe, certainly.
“The second?” Kit encouraged gently.
“I know you don’t feel the way I do,” she said, ducking her head. “I realize you want me, but wanting fades. And I realize you may even like me, despite your previous thoughts on my character. But those are not love. And I think that I couldn’t be happy, at least not in the long term, knowing that you held my heart, but I couldn’t touch yours. It wouldn’t be fair to me, or to you, or to any children we had in the future.”
He nodded slowly, as if he were taking that in. “Yes, I agree,” he said at last.
The breath went out of her lungs at that statement. It hadn’t been cruelly said, but it felt like he’d reached into her chest and pulled her heart away.
“Then we have nothing else to say,” she said, turning to leave.
He reached out, pressing his palm flat against the door so she couldn’t depart the room. “I agree thatifI didn’t return your feelings, then it would be best to part. A one-sided love would be desperate, indeed, and I would never ask someone to suffer it.”
“If?” she repeated, daring to look up at him. He was staring at her in a way she’d never seen before. Not just with desire, but with tenderness. Not just with gratitude, but with something deeper.
Something that called to her heart and made her cling to a wild hope even though she couldn’t dare have faith in it. Faith in him.
“Come with me,” he whispered. “Please.”
She swallowed as he motioned to that closed door in the distance. The one that would take her to his bed. She wanted so much to be there, but he still hadn’t told her how he felt. Still hadn’t given her anything beyond hope to cling to.
But he was a flame, she was a moth, and so when he offered his hand, she took it. He led her to the door, opened it and stepped aside to let her enter.
She caught her breath. His chamber was filled with flowers. So many flowers that she was overwhelmed by the heavenly scent wafting toward her.
“Kit?” she asked, glancing at him.
He smiled. “I picked you some flowers.”
“You picked the whole garden!” she gasped. “What in the world?”
“I started with yellow primrose, of course,” he said. “But as I gathered it I realized that it only represents part of you. That part that was connected to your mother and all you lost once, so long ago.”
